Police in Pennsylvania have arrested a man suspected of killing the CEO of insurer UnitedHealthcare in New York City, thanks to a McDonald's employee who recognized the suspect in a burger joint – and largely without help from technology.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed last Wednesday as he walked on Sixth Avenue, NYC, on his way to a meeting with shareholders. Video footage showed a man wearing a hoodie and face mask take aim at the CEO and fire several shots, before riding away on a bicycle.
At a press conference on Monday, police said they had arrested a suspect, named Luigi Mangione, at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a worker recognized him and alerted authorities. Mangione is 26 and hails from Maryland.
During the arrest, officers reportedly retrieved a gun, a sound suppressor (silencer), several fake IDs, and a multi-page document allegedly penned by Mangione. The weapon is reportedly a "ghost gun" that used home-made parts – perhaps 3D printed – to avoid the need for registration.
Technology proves poor detective
Police in New York searched for the shooter for five days, using physical and digital means including sending divers into a Central Park lake. However, the suspect managed to elude all the plentiful and pervasive surveillance tech in the Big Apple.
New York City has around 25,500 public and private cameras just at traffic intersections, according to Amnesty International. And the NYPD used facial recognition evidence in 22,000 legal cases between 2016 and 2019.
Last Thursday, the NYPD released photos of a person of interest, and confirmed to the press they were trying to use facial recognition technology to identify the suspect. While the released pictures posed challenges for facial recognition because the suspect's facial features were largely obscured, they appear to have been sufficient to allow the McDonald's worker to recognize the suspect.
Another unproductive NYPD tech system is called ShotSpotter. It employs over 2,000 sensors scattered around the city to detect the sound of firearms being discharged, so that officers can be alerted.
In this case, ShotSpotter would most likely have been ineffective as the alleged shooter reportedly used a suppressor and what appeared to be subsonic rounds.
ShotSpotter is known to have problems. A June 2024 audit found it had problems discerning gunshots from other loud noises.
"ShotSpotter claims to be 'a proven detection system' that is 'faster and more accurate,' but our audit found that 87 percent of the time, ShotSpotter is sending NYPD officers in response to loud noises that don't turn out to be confirmed shootings," declared the city's comptroller Brad Lander in June 2024.
"The evidence shows that the NYPD is wasting precious time and money on this technology and needs to do a better job managing its resources. Chasing down car backfires and construction noise does not make us safer," Lander complained.
The NYPD has alleged the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO was premeditated. Reportedly, the discarded shell casings were marked with the words "deny," "defend," and "depose" – thought to be a reference to Jay Feinman's 2010 book "Delay, Deny, Defend," which exposed the way health insurance companies in America get rich by denying care and fighting claims.
It's possible that the killer was motivated by a grudge against the health insurance provider – UnitedHealthcare is notorious for refusing to pay out for treatments. Recent research shows that the business rejected 32 percent of claims – much higher than the industry average – and it's currently being sued for allegedly relying on a faulty AI model to deny claims.
Adding to its controversies, parent company UnitedHealth Group paid $22 million to ransomware operators after subsidiary Change Healthcare was attacked. Cleaning up that incident has already cost close to a billion dollars and the group's boss was called before Congress to explain himself. ®